And yah, of course it's cheap. "Hmm, let's see...opponent slower? Use Horn Attack and win the RNG battle 9 times out of 10!" "Oh, he's faster? Spam 1 and/or use Primal Cry and then Horn Attack NEXT turn and win the RNG game!" Either way, they'll find a way to completely bowl you over in the end. It's irritating, unfair, and somehow I do not think it's going to get a whole lot better in 5.4. "Oh, my Charge is on a CD now? Oh yah, I have Primal Cry so I can just shift back and forth between two attacks that rarely miss and drive opponents almost literally to rip their own hair out!"

Oh, did I mention that I faced Trip-horns like 10 times tonight? I actually beat the team once with a Wolvar/Razortooth/Toothy comp that wrecked his setup a bit. They're not unbeatable...as I could probably level another Moth and put a damper on their day...but yes, they are lame and I may have to start using pets with +Speed buffs to the whole team soon in order to counter their crap.

In 5.4, the critter racial is being changed to "Critter type's passive effect now makes critters immune to roots, stuns, and sleep effects." So, in addition to the charge ability getting a 1 round CD, the right critters are going to make a triple direhorn team a lot less viable.

Lexianna wrote:In 5.4, the critter racial is being changed to "Critter type's passive effect now makes critters immune to roots, stuns, and sleep effects." So, in addition to the charge ability getting a 1 round CD, the right critters are going to make a triple direhorn team a lot less viable.

Thing about that is, the Horn Attack doesn't actually produce a "stun", per se, but rather it dazes the pet I believe, causing it to become "trampled" and lose its half of the turn. I doubt it will be any less viable than it is now, as your critter might live a turn longer due to the Trihorn Charge damage nerf, but unless it's a real beast or has some serious evasive skills, it's still gonna be toast.

Direhorns are getting nerfed in 5.4 in a rather round-about way. You have to think of the big picture.

Right now. Lightning storm, turrets, minefield type teams destroy direhorns. I mean, you can literally see the 3xDirehorn owner crying if you get 2 turrets down. And even with 1 turret down, they still die very fast.

The problem with lightning-turret teams is that if you go against an elemental team, or a sandstorm team you are getting destroyed. So it is basically hard to play a lightning team often.. yeah, you will rarely get a glorifying win against a direhorn team, but more often you will get destroyed against two other popular teams. My hope is that with the changes to mechanical weaknesses and the change to standstorm, the storm-turrent teams will at least have a chance against those teams, and therefore played frequently enough to force people to put away their 3xdirehorn team.

But I am telling you. Very rarely I play storm-turrets-landmine teams.. and when you get 3xdirehorn.. it is probably the most gratifying moments in all of wow.

Call Lightning is getting the same nerf as Sandstorm though (5 round cd, lasts 5 rounds). And the changes to mechanical weakness that were discussed are not implemented on PTR, ie elementals still double-counter mechs. But elementals' passive did get fixed, so ironically the worst possible nightmare for Lightning teams will become real: Living Sandling that gets the shield benefit from its own Sandstorm.

Lightning teams did get an interesting new piece with Skywisp Moth though -- it might or might not be coincidence that they made another flyer with Call Lightning, which should be highly effective against Direhorns. Wowdb's info for that guy is still messed up, so here's the wowhead link -- Slicing Wind/Counterspell/Call Lightning looks promising.

But overall, I don't really see Direhorns going anywhere. They still do higher-than-normal damage, they still have their snare+Horn Attack.

I was actually just talking about this on wow forums and a little tidbit that isn't in the official patch notes but reported by a player, Simca, on his thread detailing undocumented changes:-

Kick, Counterspell, Interrupting Gaze, Horn Attack, Backflip, and Interrupting Jolt now cause and are affected by the Resilient debuff.

No more 3 in a row interrupts from direhorns as well as no more spam charge!

On using Lightning currently, I'm playing one atm just for that pleasure beating the direhorn teams. Triple mech, while it sounds good, runs up against the slightly smarter direwhores who run 2 direhorns and an elemental or fiendish imp, I'm running tainted waveling(2,2,3), thundering serpent hatchling(2,1,1), sunreaver micro-sentry (2,1,1). This can lose now and then to direhorn/direhorn+rag teams if they get really lucky on the procs, but generally they get stomped, tainted waveling has an aquatic dot plus it's magic dot which adds to damage taken, in 3 rounds vs it's game over and they usually don't even realise until the end, when all 3 dots, all boosted by the magic debuff, tick on the same round.